Very usual around my house, too. Having lost blubird nestlings to the black rat snake on more than one occasion I have had to employ numerous and sometimes unsightly baffles to prevent another recurrence. A few years ago on a beautiful Mother's Day, I was relaxing on my back porch with a good book from one of my kids and heard an awful racket in the yard. It was centered around my "duck box" which has hosted owls and tree rats(squirrels). Cardinals and carolina wrens and blue jays were all fussing and as I watched a huge black rat snake slithered out of the thankfully EMPTY box--which was almost forty feet up the side of an oak tree. It made its leisurely way down --straight down-- not winding around as I thought it might. With the drought drying up all the streams and small ponds in our area, we are even seeing red bellied water snakes up at our house. Amy Barbe Athens-Clarke County

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